cyber attacks; cyber war?

[audrey_girl]

fyi:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/...s_cyber_attack

[shiny!]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

Government systems should not be running Micro$oft Windows under any circumstances. They should be using uber-secure operating systems such as one of the BSDs or a hardened Linux. Windows was created primarily for ease-of-use for home computers. Security was an afterthought and will always be playing catch-up to UNIX-type systems, where security is built in from the bottom up.

These exploits are targeted for Windows because Windows has security holes you could back a semi through! Insane for our gov't to be spending taxpayer dollars for a closed-source, insecure O/S, plus all the required anti-virus programs, firewalls, etc. Obviously, it's doing a bang-up job!

I won't trust Windows on my home/office/business computer, but I have to trust that our most sensitive gov't agencies run on that crap. Money talks, I guess.

[sn1p3r]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

...no bias what so ever, eh? I didn't see a mention of an operating system in the article...did I miss the quote about not having the latest service pack?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

Government systems should not be running Micro$oft Windows under any circumstances.

Read the article. It is not relevant what operating system is running on the systems being attacked. What is happening is that publically visible web servers of the government are being hit with a denial of service attack, meaning many ordinary Windows PC's have been infected with software that is now making a co-ordinated series of high volume access requests to the targeted government computers.

The article states:

Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites also were paralyzed in a suspected cyber attack Tuesday. An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time,

The only practical solution is to prohibit the connection of unauthorized PC's to the internet. This used to be the way with telephones, a half century ago, in at least the United States. AT&T had the monopoly almost everywhere in the United States on telephone service and only allowed equipment owned by, approved by, and rented from AT&T to be connected to the phone system.

Older people will recall these phones:


There are indications that mainland China will be going this way soon, allowing only PC's that have some sort of special government approved guardian software installed (I forget the name.)

Here's what I think of that idea:

[don]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

One thing those AT&T phones were good for was home defense. You could drop a steer with the handset.

[skyson]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

Read the article. It is not relevant what operating system is running on the systems being attacked. What is happening is that publically visible web servers of the government are being hit with a denial of service attack, meaning many ordinary Windows PC's have been infected with software that is now making a co-ordinated series of high volume access requests to the targeted government computers.

The article states:
The only practical solution is to prohibit the connection of unauthorized PC's to the internet. This used to be the way with telephones, a half century ago, in at least the United States. AT&T had the monopoly almost everywhere in the United States on telephone service and only allowed equipment owned by, approved by, and rented from AT&T to be connected to the phone system.

Older people will recall these phones:


There are indications that mainland China will be going this way soon, allowing only PC's that have some sort of special government approved guardian software installed (I forget the name.)

Here's what I think of that idea:

it is called: Green Dam

[shiny!]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

You're right. Sometimes jumping to conclusions is the only exercise I get. Still, my bias against Windows remains. Malevolent hackers infect millions of Windows computers to conduct their DOS attacks. They couldn't do it without them.

[D-Mack]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

Network Shutdown Bill Faces Changes, Aide Says


Friday, June 26, 2009 1:20 PM PDT

A bill in the U.S. Senate that would allow President Barack Obama to shut down parts of the Internet during a cybersecurity crisis will likely be rewritten and needs input from private businesses, said a congressional staff member associated with the legislation.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced in April by Senators Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, contains "imperfect" language, said Ellen Doneski, chief of staff for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

The bill, among other things, allows the U.S. president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network." The sponsors of the bill are looking for input on that section and other parts of the bill, said Doneski, who works for Rockefeller, the committee chairman.

That section of the bill was an attempt to put into law who has the ultimate authority for protecting U.S. cyberinfrastructure, Doneski said Friday at a cybersecurity forum sponsored by Google and the Center for New American Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "We were trying to state the obvious: In an extreme cyberemergency or attack, the president ultimately has constitutional authority to protect the country," she said. "It really wasn't meant to go beyond that."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...aide_says.html

Is the public ready to beg Rockefeller to give Obama the key for shutting down the net?

[Fiat Currency]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

Is the public ready to beg Rockefeller to give Obama the key for shutting down the net?

All I know is that the entire truth isn't coming out here. Effective strategies for dealing with DoS, DDoS, Ping of Death, Smurfing, Nukes etc. have been around since the early 1990s.

Somebody is shoveling something here :rolleyes:

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.

That gets closer to something I could agree to.

If major "on-ramps" (routers connecting ISPs to the backbone networks) to the internet within the United States were required to be able to throttle down traffic to specific network addresses, such as government websites that were lightning rods for Denial of Service attacks, on order of the government, that's a practical technical solution that doesn't intrude on (or much protect) other users of the internet.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

All I know is that the entire truth isn't coming out here. Effective strategies for dealing with DoS, DDoS, Ping of Death, Smurfing, Nukes etc. have been around since the early 1990s.

Well, TheCynicalCow will always and everywhere agree that "the entire truth isn't coming out" ;).

However I am less sure that entirely effective strategies exist for sufficiently aggressive DoS attacks. You might be able to keep your own website up when under such an attack, but legitimate users will see very poor response and timeouts, as their requests are drowned out by the flood of Attack Packets.

My fading recollection is that even the big guys, such as Amazon or Google, have found it difficult to withstand the more aggressive attacks, and they run much larger, more sophisticated setups than www.usa.gov.

===

Perhaps these complaints of North Korean attacks are a ploy to garner support for the Internet bill mentioned above :rolleyes:? Yeah - that sounds more plausible to TheCynicalCow.

[nero3]

Re: cyber attacks; cyber war?

The attempts to pin some of these attacks on North Korea, is the most laughable I have ever read.